Page 19 - Designing_Nature_The_Rinpa_Aesthetic_in_Japanese_Art Metropolitan Museum PUB

Fig. 2 tawaraya so¯tatsu (d. ca. 1640). Waves at Matsushima, edo period (1615 – 1868), tradition, and experimentation with colored pigments
early 17th century. pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, color, gold, and silver became increasingly prevalent.
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on paper, each screen 65 /8 ∞ 12 ft. 1 /8 in. (166 ∞ 369.9 cm). freer gallery of
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art, Washington, d.C.; gift of Charles Lang freer (f1906.231-232) In the early eighteenth century, the courtier Konoe
Iehiro (1667 – 1736), in his journal Kaiki, mentioned that
Sōtatsu’s ink paintings were “images drawn in silhouette”
depictions, meaning without ink outlines), and tarashi komi (kage-bōshi o utsushita mono). By this description Iehiro
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(“dripping in,” referring to the layering of ink or pigment on meant that the artist’s paintings were rendered not with

surface areas still wet with paler ink or color). Tarashikomi distinct outlines but with planes of shadow created in dif-
creates various gradations of ink diffused within a dis- ferent tones of gray and black ink. A good number of such
crete area of the painting surface. Since it is impossible paintings survive — an indication of their great demand
to predict how the ink will spread after it is applied to a at the time — and while almost all are now individual
damp area, the artist voluntarily surrenders to the whims of hanging scrolls, it is safe to assume that many were originally

nature and the physical properties of the ink and pigment, designed to be mounted on the panels of folding screens,
but within carefully demarcated borders, which prevent since the large, vertical formats correspond closely to that of
the painting from degenerating into a random blurring or individual screen panels. 14
blobs. Effectively employed, the layering of ink or pigment Sōtatsu and his studio created numerous ink paint-

using the tarashikomi technique can result in intriguing ings of waterfowl and other common animals, such as grebe
and subtly sensuous texturing effects. As time went on, and ducks, using the “boneless” technique (cats. 49, 50).
this technique became a trademark of artists in the Rinpa later generations of Rinpa artists would make similar
a history of rinpa

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